Bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on their employees, ensuring clandestine porn-watching, constant social media-browsing and unlimited personal cellphone use isn’t occupying billing hours. But employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity.
I absolutely hate “open-office” layouts. I’ve worked for two companies that used them, and found them to be significantly less productive environments to work in. I hated the way my “door was always open” to co-workers to walk up and interrupt me as I was trying to concentrate on whatever I was working on at the time. And as the author of the article writes, they did little to nothing to improve inter-office communication and collaboration; many times it did just the opposite.
